Sit Still: Focus Timer

This month: doors thrown open over a warm Paris, and hollyhocks past your shoulder at a rose cottage. Two new rooms, painted for September, gone on the 1st.

Sit Still is a focus timer that gives you somewhere to be.

Most focus apps punish you, Sit Still keeps you company. A cat sleeps in a painted room while you work, and the reward for sitting still is a collection you build. Blocking is real but never a cage: every lock can be switched off. The rooms are the heart of it: watercolour illustrations painted like the pages of a childhood picture book, meant to feel cozy and nostalgic — to stir a memory of being small and safe somewhere — each with its own soundscape.

APP BLOCKING FEATURES Three app blocking modes for a focus session: Companionship, Whitelist and Strict. App blocking rules put the apps you choose away on a schedule of your own, or hold them to a daily limit. And a bedtime lock, on a schedule you set, which fires whether or not you opened the app that day.

WALLPAPERS AND WIDGETS Any room you have can be saved to your Photos as a wallpaper, drawn at your phone's full resolution, with your cat in the corner or without it. Widgets for the room you are sitting in, with your recent days under it, and for the collection, which turns over an hour at a time. Your streak goes on the Lock Screen in three shapes, and the small ones appear in StandBy while the phone charges on its side.

A TIMER WITH THREE SHAPES Countdown, open-ended, or pomodoro — twenty-five minutes on, five off, a longer break every fourth block. A wheel to pick the length, one round button to start. The session keeps going when the screen locks, and shows itself on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.

A COLLECTION OF ROOMS, TWO OF THEM FREE Seventeen permanent ones, from a bookshop loft in Porto to a stilt house on the Mekong Delta, and two new rooms on the first of every month that leave with it. Every room has its own illustration and its own ambience loop, levelled against all the others so changing rooms is never a lurch.

A CAT, AND THINGS FOR IT TO WEAR Six companions, hand-drawn and animated. Focusing earns whiskers, and whiskers buy cat accessories and the monthly rooms. Pet the cat and it notices.

WHAT YOU MEANT TO DO, AND WHAT YOU DID A task list that stays in sync with your phone's own Reminders, both ways. A record of every session — hours, streaks, and the note you left about what you were working on.

Sit Still Premium is an auto-renewing subscription, offered monthly or yearly at the price shown in the app. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and can be managed or cancelled in Settings › your Apple Account › Subscriptions.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://alteraapps.com/sit-still/privacy/